Mindless Snacking (and How to Stop)

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Related Episodes:

• Being Too Busy and Your Eating Habits
• Stress Eating
• Eating Habits for Career Women

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life podcast. I can’t wait to talk to you about mindless snacking today, partly because there’s a lot of discussion out there on mindful eating, but not as much about mindless eating, and more specifically mindless snacking.

Also partly because, as an Eating Habit Coach who focuses on helping career women break their “bad” eating habits, mindless eating is something that I see women struggling with so commonly. It’s especially prevalent with busy women, such as career women. This is why I really wanted to do somewhat of a deep dive into this topic with you today. And I think you’re really going to love what I’ll be teaching you a little bit more toward the end of the episode to get control of mindless snacking. I don’t think it’s going to be exactly what you would expect. You’ll see what I mean.

So you’ve probably heard of mindful eating. First, I just want to define this term. As with any term, you can find multiple definitions, all somewhat similar. The definition I thought encompassed it the best, was one I found in an article from Diabetes Spectrum listed in the National Library of Medicine. In this article, the author Joseph Nelson defines it as “paying attention to our food, on purpose, moment by moment, without judgment)” and states that it “is an approach to food that focuses on individuals’ sensual awareness of the food and their experience of the food.”

So essentially, you’re using as many of the senses as you can to experience the action of eating as well as the food or foods that you’re eating. This way of eating is one that promotes awareness of the actual food as well as the experience of eating the food. It allows you to not be distracted by anything else around you, so that you can have an enjoyable moment just with the food. Mindful eating can take a little bit longer than “regular “eating that most of us do on a routine basis, but not necessarily.

Contrast mindful eating with mindless eating. This is obviously going to be the opposite. This is when you are not focused on the behavior of eating or the food itself. You were typically distracted, commonly multitasking, or at least distracted with your thoughts. You are not using many of the senses to “experience “the food or the action of eating. You may taste the food, but other than that the rest of the senses are essentially being ignored during the eating process.

I just want to mention here that mindless eating isn’t “wrong” in and of itself. However, it can potentially lead to certain things that can have some negative results, which I’ll get to shortly. If you think about it, many people mindlessly eat. If you think about the purpose of eating, it is for nutrition and energy. You don’t necessarily have to use all of your senses to get the nutrition and energy from the food, right? That’s why mindless eating is not something “bad “necessarily.

Our brains were not created to mindfully eat, this is just something that has developed as a desirable behavior by some, because it can be seen as very beneficial. Beneficial in the sense that you can get enjoyment out of the experience, as well as some other benefits such as not judging yourself afterward for the food you ate, or the amount you ate. I’ll get into this a little more further into the episode.

So let’s go one step further, to mindless snacking. So mindless snacking is going to be when you are not paying attention to the experience of snacking, or the particular snacking foods. Now, there are lots of opinions out there that snacking is a healthy eating habit and lots of opinions that snacking is not a healthy eating habit.

I’m not going to make a judgement about snacking as it’s very different for different people. Many people snack for the reason of being hungry, but also many people snack for enjoyment of the snacking food and the action itself.

Snacking can be totally fine, as it can have lots of benefits like providing some energy in between meals if needed or satisfying hunger signals if you are feeling hungry in between meals. Mindless snacking however, is not really going to have much benefit, and can cause a lot of harm even becoming a “bad“ eating habit. The reason why I would classify this as potentially becoming a “bad“ eating habit is that it can lead to negative health effects and also negative thoughts and feelings about oneself if they are stuck in the habit of mindless snacking.

Now that we’ve defined mindless snacking, how do you know if you’re mindlessly snacking? I’m guessing that you may suspect or already know that you are mindlessly snacking, but in case it’s a suspicion and you want confirmation, or you really just have no idea, let me tell you how you may be able to tell if you’re doing this.

If you are doing an activity and snacking at the same time, you’re mindlessly snacking. Unless that activity is of course being mindful of your snacking, right? I mean, if your activity that you’re doing while you’re snacking, is paying close attention to what you’re snacking on, the experience of it, and trying to use all your senses, then of course you are not mindlessly snacking, but rather mindfully snacking. However, any other activity while you are snacking would indicate that you’re mindlessly snacking.

The other way to tell if you’re mindlessly snacking is if you are thinking about something completely unrelated to the snacking or snack foods itself, while you’re snacking. So basically, if your thoughts are elsewhere while you’re snacking, you are mindlessly snacking. In this case, you don’t necessarily have to be doing another action while snacking. It’s just that you’re thinking about something else while snacking.

If you’re still unsure, a clue that you might be mindlessly snacking is if you get to the bottom of the bag, box, package, bowl, etc. and had no idea where all the snacks went, then you might be mindlessly snacking. This just means, that you weren’t paying attention to the action of snacking itself, so much so that you didn’t even realize you were doing it in the first place.

So if you think about it right now, and consider those things that I just mentioned, do you think that you’re mindlessly snacking? If so, just be curious about it and think about how often you might be doing it. Is it once or twice a week? Once a day? Only once or twice a month?

No need to feel badly if you do find that you are mindlessly snacking either on occasion or very frequently, as this is so common, especially among career women. I’ve been guilty of this in the past, and sometimes still find myself mindlessly snacking while multitasking.

The importance of me asking you the question about your snacking habits, is that it’s only going to benefit you to be aware of if you’re mindlessly snacking, and how frequently you believe you may be doing it. Then, you can see if it is something you’d like to improve from there. Part of what will help you determine if you do want to work on making some changes with mindless snacking, is being aware of the downsides to mindless snacking. There aren’t any upsides, so that’s why I’m going straight to the downsides. Snacking itself is beneficial like I mentioned earlier, but mindless snacking really doesn’t have any benefits. Even if you’re multi-tasking. Because honestly, how much time are you really saving by eating and working at the same time or eating and lost in thought at the same time. You’re maybe saving what, 10 minutes if that?

So, onto the downsides we go. You may already have some idea, but I want to make sure I tell you some you may not have been aware of. I’m a believer that you shouldn’t do something or stop doing something just because someone suggests you should. My belief is that it’s best to be provided with some pertinent information just for you to consider, and then make a decision for yourself.

Alright, now what are some of the downsides to mindless snacking? Well let’s take a look at what’s actually happening here. When you’re mindlessly snacking, you’re not paying attention to the food that you’re eating. So, can you guess what might end up resulting from this? Eating more than you either needed or wanted to eat. This is because when you are not paying attention to how much you’re eating, you’re also not paying attention to something else. Your satiety. Satiety is just a fancy term for your fullness level. Meaning, if you feel satisfied or full, from the food.

When you are not aware, or paying attention to your satiety level, you are more likely to overeat. Overeating simple meaning eating more than you needed to, resulting in negative consequences in some form. This means, you either may not feel well physically afterward, may gain unwanted weight, especially if you overeat frequently.

Also, a large downside is that you may feel negatively towards yourself afterwards or had a thought like “I shouldn’t have done that.“ The thoughts that start with, “I should” or “I shouldn’t” are typically involved in self-judgement, right?

For example, thoughts like, “I should be a certain weight for my height.” Or, “I should be able to fit into size 6 pants.” Or “I shouldn’t be gaining weight.” Or even, “I shouldn’t be eating that.” The terms “should” and “shouldn’t” are often linked to negative feelings, like disappointment in oneself, as if there is some manual that you need to be following and shame on you if you didn’t follow exactly.

This is really a challenge for many people who feel like they can’t control their eating habits. The thoughts that occur before, during, or after eating, that are often self-critical or judgemental. Sometimes, the harm of these thoughts can be more harmful than any physical health harm from particular eating habits.

Another downside to mindless snacking is that many people enjoy snack foods, right? I mean, I certainly do. So, if you’re mindlessly snacking, are you really getting the full enjoyment from flavors and textures of the snack foods?

Yes, food was originally meant to be eaten for survival purposes, but we can still enjoy what we are eating right? That’s why we have taste buds. If we are going to be eating for nutrition, energy, survival, etc., we may as well enjoy it at the same time if possible. Maybe we don’t have to enjoy every food we eat, but some of them at least.

Now that I’ve just covered a lot of negatives, let’s switch gears here to the positives and I’ll share with you, what you can do to help prevent mindless snacking before it occurs. Also, I’m going to share what you can do if you catch yourself right in the act of mindlessly snacking. Additionally, I’m going to share what you can do afterwards in case you didn’t successfully prevent it from occurring, or catch yourself in the act. So, no worries about mindlessly snacking, because I’ve got you covered, okay?

Alright, the first step to prevention of a particular eating behavior is of course awareness. You have to get really good at knowing when you tend to mindlessly snack. So when I asked you earlier if you mindlessly snack and how often, this was to help you determine when you might be doing it. What habits do you have with your mindless snacking? Meaning, do you do it daily? Do you do it while working on the computer? Do you do it while watching TV? While reading a book? Do you do it while writing your schedule out for the week?

Once you become aware of your particular mindless snacking frequency and what activity or activities you tend to do it with, you can start to get control to prevent it. So what you’ll do next is schedule in some snacking time. Yes, you’re going to schedule in a block of time to just snack, enjoy the act of snacking, and do nothing else.

When something is scheduled in, you’ll likely feel less inclined to multitask, because you’ve made a specific appointment with yourself, so to speak, to just snack. Think of it like an appointment with a friend for lunch. If you made a lunch date for this Friday, you wouldn’t be likely to show up to the lunch date and decide to get a little work done on your laptop while eating lunch with this friend or family member, right?

That’s because it was scheduled in, and not just squeezed in last minute. When something is planned for, you’re being more intentional about it. So if you plan a snack by scheduling it into your day, it’s more intentional. It’s more of a standalone event, rather than a little side activity that your hand is doing while your mind is elsewhere.

Why this is something you’ll really love is that you’ll be able to actually enjoy the snacking, right? When your full attention is on the snacking, you can experience all it has to offer, besides just the nutrition and calories for energy, right? You can enjoy the flavor more, the texture, even how the discomfort of your hunger dissipates as you eat. Basically, the reasons why you like to snack are just magnified. You get to experience more of the benefits.

You can really pay attention to your taste buds, the crunch or smoothness of the snack food. You can pay attention to exactly how much you’re eating and when your belly tells you you’ve had enough. So that way, you’re less likely to overeat, or at least overeat as much.

Now, I certainly encourage you to do all the other mindfulness things that are commonly taught with mindful eating, such as notice the colors of the food or how it looks on your plate, enjoy the smell of your food before tasting it, chewing slowly to really appreciate taste and texture, etc.

Using all of your senses is part of mindful eating in general, so certainly is a part of mindful snacking too, which is what I’m teaching you to do to help prevent mindless eating of course. So definitely try to get all those senses involved.

Now, what happens if you forget to schedule in that 10 minutes for snacking, or you have an unexpected snack? Not to worry.

This is where that awareness of when you typically mindless snack comes in. If you catch yourself in the act of mindless snacking, just stop the other task, and remind yourself that you just need a few minutes to snack. You’ll put the other task on pause, while you snack. Unless of course, the other task is emergent, and in that case, you probably shouldn’t be snacking. You should probably be focused on the emergent task, right?

So, put down the other task. Look at your snack food, smell it, chew it, really taste it, notice the texture, and ENJOY it. Allow yourself that. You already do a lot. Just take a few moments to do a little self-care and eat the snack, without doing anything else.

Alright, now what happens when you forgot to schedule in the 10-minute snack break, fail to catch yourself in the act, and end up mindlessly snacking or potentially even overeating? You give yourself some grace. You tell yourself, “I’m a human, with a human brain, and that’s what human brains sometimes do.”

This is probably just as important, because it will most likely happen at least initially. No one is perfect, especially when it involves habits that are already formed. The neural pathways, which are just the communication pathways between the neurons, or nerve cells, are very well established and very quick when it comes to habits that have already formed.

So, no matter your intentions at first, sometimes these neural pathways are just too strong for you to execute your intentions perfectly well. This isn’t something that you should feel badly about, it just is. Creating strong neural pathways is what your brain is supposed to do.

Know how I know this? Because it’s able to, which means it was intended to. Plus, the ability to create strong neural pathways has been shown to be extremely beneficial for many functions needed to live.

So your brain is just doing it’s normal brain thing, and will take a little practice to weaken that neural pathway. When you give yourself this bit of grace or compassion, you’re not feeling badly about it. Feeling badly doesn’t cause you to do better the next time. Positive emotions like motivation, confidence, determination, those are what help you to do better next time, right?

Just like a baby learning how to walk, they don’t feel disappointed or guilty for falling while trying to walk for the first, or even 10^th time, right? They keep getting back up and trying again, because they’re determined to succeed. And they always do.

It’s not disappointment or self-judgment that makes them succeed. Just like disappointment or self-judgement won’t make you succeed with getting control of “bad” eating habits.

So, schedule some time in for yourself to eat that snack. Keep the “appointment” with yourself to do only that. Enjoy every bite and don’t feel badly if your brain goes back to doing what it’s used to doing the first few times you try. Give yourself some grace and allow yourself to believe you’ll break that habit of mindless snacking.

Thanks so much for being here with me today. If you have a friend who you think would benefit from listening to this show, please share it. She’ll really appreciate you thinking of her, and sometimes it can be more enjoyable to go on an eating habit journey with a friend, right?

Alright, take care and I’ll talk with you soon.